Obama blames Americans for poor economy...

Well, Americans wounded themselves in 2008 and 2012. So, I guess he has a point. It's just not what he thinks.

Obama says Americans are the problem with the American economy - pointing to “self-inflicted” wounds

— Charlie Spiering (@charliespiering) September 16, 2015

Obama Economy Update: Dow Tanks 10% Since May

Thanks President Obama...

LIVE COVERAGE: Dow average enters correction, falling 10% from May peak http://t.co/uONYfdj7Li

— Bloomberg Business (@business) August 21, 2015

Has the collapse of the tepid Obama recovery began?

Well, to be honest, it wasn't much of a recovery anyway...

Via NY Times:

The United States economy got off to an even weaker start this year than first thought, the government reported Friday, as economic activity contracted because of a more dismal trade performance and continued caution by businesses and consumers alike.

The 0.7 percent annual rate of decline in economic output in the first quarter of 2015 was a reversal of the initial 0.2 percent advance for the period reported last month by the Commerce Department.

Although statistical quirks and one-time factors like wintry weather in some parts of the country played a role, as did a work slowdown at West Coast ports, the lackluster report for January, February and March underscores the American economy’s continuing inability to generate much momentum.

Government Study: EPA regulations on power plants may cost economy 1.4 trillion by 2040

The coal industry will be hardest hit...

Via Daily Caller:

If you’re unsure of what impacts pending EPA regulations will have on the U.S. coal industry, look no further than a new government study showing huge declines in coal production and use as power plant fuel.
More importantly, government forecasters predict the U.S. economy could take a $1.4 trillion hit by 2040 because of the EPA’s pending power plant regulations.
The Energy Information Administration (EIA) forecasts the EPA’s “Clean Power Plan” will more than double projected coal-fired power plant retirements in the next five years, from 40 gigawatts to 90 gigawatts, and coal production could collapse more than 30 percent in the next decade.
“All major coal-producing regions (West, Interior, and Appalachia) experience negative production impacts in 2020,” EIA predicts in its report on the impacts of the EPA’s global warming rule. EIA also warns that electricity prices will increase faster due to EPA rules.
The EPA will soon finalize rules to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from new and existing power plants. Agency rules governing existing power plants, the so-called “Clean Power Plan” (CPP) have garnered the most criticism.
CPP aims to reduce CO2 emissions from power plants 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. Coal state lawmakers and the industry have heavily opposed the rule, saying it will cause massive amounts of job losses and cause energy prices to rise. EIA’s new report confirms at least some of these worries.
Keep on reading…

The White House takes irony to a new level...

WH: historically cold winter to blame for weak GDP https://t.co/cm03YEQEHO WH: we're having hottest year in history https://t.co/cwj20WjM3h

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) April 29, 2015

Wounded Bear Update: Putin Cancels New Year Holidays for Government Officials

The Russian economy is in crisis because of falling oil prices. Fracking for the win.

Via NZ Herald:

Russia’s economy will shrink by around 4 per cent next year as a result of falling oil prices and ongoing financial turmoil, its finance minister has warned. Anton Siluanov said lower revenues would force the Government to increase its budget deficit and raid reserves to make up the shortfall.
His warnings came as President Vladimir Putin scrapped New Year holidays for Government officials because of the unfolding economic crisis.
“If incomes are lower and the main spending is fully financed, then we’ll have to use reserves and increase the deficit,” said Siluanov.
He said if oil prices stayed around US$60 a barrel the economy would contract 4 per cent and the budget deficit would be “considerably higher” next year.
“One year with a deficit isn’t so scary, the most important thing is to prepare future budgets,” he said. It came as Russia’s central bank said authorities had quadrupled the amount they would pump into the Trust Bank in the country’s second-largest bank bail-out.
Keep on reading…

Chart of the Day: Japan in triple dip recession...

The global economy has some serious problems.

Census Bureau whistle-blower: Economic data being faked...

Obamabots at work?

Via NY Post:

A field supervisor in the Census Bureau’s Denver region has informed her organization’s higher-ups, the head of the Commerce Department and congressional investigators that she believes economic data collected by her office is being falsified.
And this whistleblower — who asked that I not identify her — said her bosses in Denver ignored her warnings even after she provided details of wrongdoing by three different survey takers.
The three continued to collect data even after she reported them.
When I spoke with this whistleblower earlier this year as part of my investigation of Census, she told me that hundreds of interviews that go into the Labor Department’s unemployment rate and inflation surveys would miraculously be completed just hours before deadline.
The implication was that someone with the ability to fill in the blanks on incomplete surveys was doing just that.
The Denver whistleblower also provided to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform the names of other Census workers who can spill the beans about data fraud in other regions.

GDP actually contracted in the first quarter?

One more negative quarter and we will be back in a recession.

Via WSJ:

A couple weeks ago, the Commerce Department said U.S. economic output expanded at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 0.1% in the first three months of the year. A near-stall for the economy, for sure, but at least it wasn’t worse.
That initial estimate was the government’s best guess, using the data available at the time. Based on more up-to-date figures, including the March trade data released last week, private forecasters now expect gross domestic product contracted in the first quarter for the first time in three years.[...[
Incorporating the new data, J.P. Morgan ChaseJPM -0.05% on Tuesday estimated GDP contracted at a 0.8% rate in the first quarter. Macroeconomic Advisers put the contraction at 0.7%. Barclays Capital predicted a 0.6% decline. Pierpont Securitiesestimated output fell at a 0.4% rate. Action Economics estimated a 0.2% decline.

Does recent data show the recovery is running out of gas?

This would be catastrophic for democrats this fall.  

Via The Telegraph:

The US economy has delivered two minor shocks in a week, prompting concerns that bond tapering by the Federal Reserve may be doing more damage than expected.
Non-Farm Payrolls data released on Friday shows that the workforce shed 806,000 jobs in April, a stunning drop that cannot plausibly be blamed on the weather. Wage growth and hours worked were both flat and the manufacturing hours per week fell.
This follows news earlier in the week that the economy to a halt in the first quarter. Growth plummeted to 0.1pc and is now well below the Fed’s “stall speed” indicator. Analysts blamed this on the freezing polar vortex over the winter.
Yet the jobs data confirm a disturbingly weak picture. The headline unemployment rate fell to 6.3pc but that was only because the labour “participation rate” plummeted back to a modern-era low of 62.8pc, last seen in 1978 when there were far fewer women in the workforce. The rate for males is the lowest ever recorded at 69.1pc.
The jobs market is highly volatile – and is often revised later – but the data are a warning that the US recovery may be losing momentum. Lakshman Achuthan, from the Economic Cycle Research Institute, said the trend was already weakening long before the cold weather. “We see a failure to launch. We’re decelerating, not accelerating, and that is a big concern,” he said.

Obamanomics: The middle-aged are being forced to move in with their parents...

Change...

Via The LA Times: 

Debbie Rohr lives with her husband and twin teenage sons in a well-tended three-bedroom home in Salinas.
The ranch-style house has a spacious kitchen that looks out on a yard filled with rosebushes. It's a modest but comfortable house, the type that Rohr, 52, pictured for herself at this stage of life.
She just never imagined that it would be her childhood home, a return to a bedroom where she once hung posters of Olivia Newton-John and curled up with her beloved Mrs. Beasley doll.
Driven by economic necessity — Rohr has been chronically unemployed and her husband lost his job last year — she moved her family back home with her 77-year-old mother.
At a time when the still sluggish economy has sent a flood of jobless young adults back home, older people are quietly moving in with their parents at twice the rate of their younger counterparts.
For seven years through 2012, the number of Californians aged 50 to 64 who live in their parents' homes swelled 67.6% to about 194,000, according to the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research and the Insight Center for Community Economic Development.

Change: 86M Makers, 148M Benefit Takers

86 million Americans are supporting the rest of this country. 

Via CNS:

Buried deep on the website of the U.S. Census Bureau is a number every American citizen, and especially those entrusted with public office, should know. It is 86,429,000.
That is the number of Americans who in 2012 got up every morning and went to work — in the private sector — and did it week after week after week.
These are the people who built America, and these are the people who can sustain it as a free country. The liberal media have not made them famous like the polar bear, but they are truly a threatened species.

Democratic Heartbreak: Economy isn't revving up for midterms...

 I guess Democrats will just have to run on Obamacare...

Via Politico:

So far, it’s been easy to dismiss weak economic news as the result of an awful winter. But those excuses ended with Friday’s March jobs report, the first of spring, which showed a lower-than-expected gain of 192,000 — Wall Street traders were looking for something closer to 300,000 — and an economy not losing speed but not exactly revving up for the run to the November midterm elections.
Democrats were fervently hoping for a bigger number. Because if they don’t get faster growth soon, they could wind up trying to hold off Republicans this fall while fighting the triple threat of an unpopular president, an unpopular health care law and a stagnant economy that has left voters grouchy and pessimistic.

Change: Obama allegedly is going to focus on the economy again...

How can you focus on the economy when Obamacare and EPA regulations are strangling it?

Via WaPo:

With several controversies fading and a period of intense foreign travel over, President Obama is narrowing his focus this summer to two issues, immigration and the economy, that could help determine the success or failure of his second term. [...]
The president also plans a series of summertime events focused on steps the government can take to drive economic growth, aides said. Many in the White House see a Sept. 30 deadline to renew government funding as probably the last opportunity for Obama to scale back the deep domestic spending cuts known as sequestration before the 2014 midterm elections.

Economic Fail: First quarter GDP revised down to a pitiful 1.8%...

www.ksat.com 

This isn't the recovery Americans were hoping for. 

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Uh-oh. The U.S. economy suddenly looks weaker, after the government revised its data for the first quarter.
Gross domestic product — the broadest measure of economic activity — rose at a mere 1.8% annual pace between January and March, marking a sharp downward revision from the 2.4% pace reported by the Commerce Department last month.
The government revises its GDP figures several times, but economists weren’t expecting such a dramatic change from the third estimate.
“This was certainly unexpected and, I believe, rare,” said Jennifer Lee, senior economist with BMO Capital Markets, referring to the revision.
The weaker figures came primarily from revisions to consumer spending, exports and commercial real estate.

Scary: Obama now getting economic advice from Al Sharpton...

Improve the economy we much...

Via The Weekly Standard:

Barack Obama met with Al Sharpton and other "African American leaders" to discuss the president's "plan to strengthen the economy for the middle class and continue to build ladders of opportunity for those striving to get there," according to the White House.
Participants in the meeting included:

• Melanie Campbell, President, National Coalition of Black Civic Participation
• Ralph Everett, President, Joint Center for Economic and Political Studies
• Wade Henderson, President, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights
• Ben Jealous, President, National Association of the Advancement of Colored People
• Avis Jones-DeWeever, Executive Director, National Council of Negro Women
• Sharon J. Lettman-Hicks, Executive Director, National Black Justice Coalition
• Al Sharpton, Founder and President of National Action Network
• Rev Derrick Harkins, 19th Street Baptist Church
• Judith Browne Dianis, Co-Director, Advancement Project

Obama blames “bad decisions in Washington” for economic contraction...

If you think he is manning up and taking some ownership, you are wrong. He blamed Congress...


Via The Hill:

President Obama blamed the recent contraction of the U.S. economy on “bad decisions in Washington” in his weekly address.

The national economy shrank by 0.1 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012, according to figures released this week by the Commerce Department. The contraction was an unexpected reversal of months of modest economic growth since the end of the recession in mid-2009.

Obama said in his address that the dip was the fault of “bad decisions” being made in Washington.

“We began this year with economists and business leaders saying that we are poised to grow in 2013,” he said. “But this week, we also received the first estimate of America’s economic growth over the last few months. And it reminded us that bad decisions in Washington can get in the way of our economic progress.”

Economy suffered surprise economic contraction in the fourth quarter of 2012. WH blames Republicans...

The lamestream media lets Team Obama get away with crap like this:

Via The Hill:

White House press secretary Jay Carney laid the blame for a surprise economic contraction squarely at the feet of congressional Republicans Wednesday, saying economic threats during the “fiscal cliff” negotiations had prevented important defense spending.

“Our economy is facing a major headwinds, and that’s Republicans in Congress,” Carney said.

The Commerce Department projected Wednesday that the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) shrank by 0.1 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012.

Carney said that was partially attributable to the threat of sequestration, which would implement across-the-board spending cuts if a long-term deficit deal is not reached.
“This is political brinkmanship that results in one primary victim. That’s American taxpayers and the American middle class,” Carney said, acknowledging the GDP projection was bad news.

NBC’s Chuck Todd Finally Discovers the Data Showing America Is Not Better Off After 4 Years of Obama

Chuck Todd and many others in the mainstream media will never find their journalistic integrity.  It's too late for that.

Chart of the Day: Change in Income Under Obama

This chart is from liberal New Republic. They have finally acknowledged the alleged Obama recovery is horrible. Read the article associates with the chart here.